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"We were essentially being shell-shocked by rapid change. That was one of the things you needed science-fiction writers for back in the Sixties, because we could cope with the future."
- Peter Watts
 |
| Torch | ||
| The orifice from which issued the reaction mass of an atomic powered space craft. |
| The Mayflower was shaped like a ball with a cone on one side—top shaped. The point of the cone was her jet—although Chief Engineer Ortega, who showed us around, called it her "torch."
If you count the torch end as her stern, then the round end, her bow, was where the control room was located... The torch and the whole power plant space were cut off from the rest of the ship by a radiation shield that ran right through the ship. |
| Technovelgy from Farmer in the Sky,
by Robert Heinlein. Published by Scribners in 1950 Additional resources -
|
As far as I know, the first use of the word "torchship" occurred several years later, in Heinlein's 1953 story Sky Lift (see the entry for torchship).
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'He found a barber shop which, he thought, would be good for an idle hour.'
'Thirty rounds of fighting is tough work. Even for machines.'
'...the excavations were already in progress, for he saw gray slopes of rubble.'
'...the walking mills of Puffy Products began to tread delicately on their centipede legs across the wheat fields of Kansas.'
'Here is a Clerk that would work incessantly, and neither eat, sleep, want payment, or grumble.'
'ZARNAK, YOU'RE TO COMMAND A SCOUTING EXPEDITION --- FIND OUT WHAT THIS IS ALL ABOUT!'
'These are your rudimentary seed packages... Some will combine in place to form more complicated structures.'
